I have a trust, left to me by my late father. I am 21 years

Customer Question

I have a trust, left to me by my late father. I am 21 years old. I get half of the money when I am 25 and half when I am 30. My trustee is supposed to give me the money I need for living expenses. He has also given me a credit card. I have not been able to get a hold of my trustee, nor my lawyer for 2 months now. My credit card is not being paid and I have had to resort to using my personal credit card for daily expenses such as gas and food. I am in college, so my tuition is also paid out of the estate. I have medical bills that have gone to collection. I started having issues mid summer. Since this point, my credit score, which was 720 has now dropped to 635 and potentially lower. I have no idea what to do, as I cannot get a hold of either my lawyer or my trustee

Ok, if the trustee is violating his fiduciary duties as well as his contractual duties to follow the terms of the trust and provide certain funds to you as dictated by the trust directives then you have a couple options.

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You could start out slow and hire a local attorney to send a "demand" letter basically threatening to sue the trustee for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty and to seek injunctive action to force them to do their job as well as a judgment against them personally for any attorney fees that you incurred in pursuing this...

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Then if the trustee doesn't respond, you would have to actually file suit in the local probate court under a breach of contract and fiduciary duty complaint. This would force the trustee to appear in front of the judge and explain why they were violating the specific instructions in the trust and why they shouldn't be penalized for doing so..

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If you can show that this is a malicious action, you may be able to recover punitive damages to set an example and deter future similar behavior from the trustee personally.

I have still been unable to contact my trustee or my lawyer. I am just wondering if I should find a different lawyer? And if so how do I go about doing that? I live in a small town where there are not many options for lawyers.

If it has been 2 weeks and your lawyer hasn't responded, then yes, I think it is time to contact a different attorney.. Either another one locally who handles probate or one from a different adjoining town so they can take action without being buddies with the other attorney..

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www.martindale.com

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If you feel your original question and any related follow ups have been answered, I would very much appreciate a positive rating on the answer I have provided so I receive credit for my work. If you have a new question the JustAnswer folks require that you start a new question page, but you can request me by putting "For Barrister" in the caption and they will get it to me.